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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (96854)	4/29/2003 11:06:49 PM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

..that still leaves the threats of WMD's and a new type of war to fight. Steven den Beste had a fascinating article about the US's technological capabilities now and in the future, which he titled, "they also serve who stand and digitate": denbeste.nu ..What you get on the digital battlefield is two things in particular. First, you get a much more clear idea of the state of the battle than has been possible in the last hundred years. Second, you get vastly better coordination of combined-arms combat. The 4th "high tech" Mechanized Infantry Division takes this to a new level, because every vehicle in the division is part of a broadband digital network. It isn't just the commanders who have that clear picture of the battlefield; everyone's got it. In future we'll go even further, because each individual dismounted infantryman will actually be part of such a network, literally wearing a computer system with a helmet-mounted graphics display. The basic system is currently known as "Land Warrior" and it's in prototype now. There have been some training exercises using it which were judged to be successful. The guys using it look kind of funny, but they fight real good. They can do things like scout around corners, and shoot around corners, without exposing themselves because they can look through the eye of a camera mounted on their weapon. But even more critically, these guys know not only where the other members of their own squad are located (within arm's reach), but also where all the other squads are. They can pull up a map of the area and see friendlies on it as colored dots. They can watch them move; squads can make coordinated assaults in a way which has never been possible before. None of this is cheap. Another side effect of the switch to industrial age warfare was a drastic increase in the cost of war. War has never been cheap, of course, but for the cost of a single battleship in 1920 you could have floated an entire wooden fleet in 1820. Of course, that battleship also could have easily defeated the entire wooden fleet; that was the point. Likewise, a single American infantry regiment from 1944 could have defeated Napoleon's entire Grande Armee which invaded Russia in 1812. Assuming it had supply, because to fight it needs all that "tail" behind it, doing the unglamorous job of hauling literally millions of tons of supply to the front. The cost of industrial age war pays off in battlefield effectiveness. Then there was this title from the WSJ: February 13, 2003 How Europe's Armies Let Their Guard Down Guaranteed Jobs Leave Little Room To Buy Equipment or Train for Battle So what will they do? Pension off their existing soldiers to make way for younger ones, AND buy all that new equipment and train them?? Do they have the political will as well as the money to do that? And, as someone else said, who do they plan to fight?